THE OBJECTS OF SCIENCE 65

tions which have been brought against the validity of this

conviction.

The stock objection is based on the supposed constant and

inevitable delusion we are led into by our sensations of colour,

sound, smell, and taste the secondary qualities of bodies

as contrasted with their primary qualities of extension, size,

shape, number, motion, etc. It is then further argued that if

we are entirely deceived as regards the secondary qualities,

the primary qualities can be in no better case, each of them

being, to our experience, but a plexus of our own feelings,

vivid and faint.

And we freely concede that in this Idealists are so far right

that if we could not directly know things in themselves, but

only the impressions they make on us, then the said primary

qualities might be no more than combinations of certain of

those groups of muscular feelings and feelings of effort and

resistance, which have been made use of by us in acquiring

such ideas. Nevertheless, there is a great difference in our

notions of these two sets (primary and secondary) of quali-

ties. For, in the first place, colours and sounds are each

perceived by one sense only; but in examining the solidity,

extension, figure, number, and motion of any object we

perceive, we can bring various modes of feeling to confirm

the evidence of vision. We find also that doubt as to

primary qualities carries with it very different results from a

disbelief in the objective validity of our impressions as to

secondary ones. If we became convinced that nothing in

the remotest degree, like the secondary qualities we know of,

existed in the perceived objects themselves, the world would

lose very much of its charm for us. Flowers would have lost

their tints as well as their fragrance, and the melody of birds,

no less than their brilliance of plumage, would have disap-

peared ; but otherwise things would remain substantially as

they were. But with the disappearance of primary qualities

tions which have been brought against the validity of this

conviction.

The stock objection is based on the supposed constant and

inevitable delusion we are led into by our sensations of colour,

sound, smell, and taste the secondary qualities of bodies

as contrasted with their primary qualities of extension, size,

shape, number, motion, etc. It is then further argued that if

we are entirely deceived as regards the secondary qualities,

the primary qualities can be in no better case, each of them

being, to our experience, but a plexus of our own feelings,

vivid and faint.

And we freely concede that in this Idealists are so far right

that if we could not directly know things in themselves, but

only the impressions they make on us, then the said primary

qualities might be no more than combinations of certain of

those groups of muscular feelings and feelings of effort and

resistance, which have been made use of by us in acquiring

such ideas. Nevertheless, there is a great difference in our

notions of these two sets (primary and secondary) of quali-

ties. For, in the first place, colours and sounds are each

perceived by one sense only; but in examining the solidity,

extension, figure, number, and motion of any object we

perceive, we can bring various modes of feeling to confirm

the evidence of vision. We find also that doubt as to

primary qualities carries with it very different results from a

disbelief in the objective validity of our impressions as to

secondary ones. If we became convinced that nothing in

the remotest degree, like the secondary qualities we know of,

existed in the perceived objects themselves, the world would

lose very much of its charm for us. Flowers would have lost

their tints as well as their fragrance, and the melody of birds,

no less than their brilliance of plumage, would have disap-

peared ; but otherwise things would remain substantially as

they were. But with the disappearance of primary qualities